Options Trading News

Is there enough money to propel the banks and the cyclicals ever higher without crushing companies like Kimberly-Clark and Kraft?

Can Wells Fargo advance without hurting Coca-Cola, or JP Morgan keep running without getting to Clorox?

We are at one of those moments like I remember in the 1990s where the issue isn't making money, but making more money than the other guy. When I was a hedge fund manager I was ferociously competitive, and I would be in my stocks thinking I was making enough money, let's say in Alcoa and Freeport-McMoRan and Honeywell, and the growth guys would be in Microsoft, U.S. Robotics, and Qualcomm.

I would sit there and curse at my screen because while I was making money, it wasn't enough. They were outperforming, and I was underperforming.

Until these last few sessions there was nothing zero-sum about this market. Everyone was making money, just different degrees of it. But today I am seeing money coming out of the consumer packaged-goods plays that we all know are inflated and going into banks and cyclicals.

This rotation's going on because people feel that the economy's getting better, that Europe's bottoming, and that interest rates are going higher.

What's that, you say? You get that the cyclicals should be running, but the banks? Don't they go down on higher rates?

Normally they do. But it is entirely possible that we could get a yield curve where banks are able to make a lot of money putting that deposit money to work in Treasuries that give them a half-decent return, which they don't have now. That increase in net interest margin is what the big buyers of banks have been waiting for, and it might be on the way.

Still, this situation has to be monitored closely. More money has to come in to the market to sustain these levels, let alone advance. That means we need the market to simmer, catch its breath, and make sure that it isn't a gigantic fake-out.

You know, I don't think it is. We've had too much of a run to consider it bogus. But it doesn't mean we can't sell off, with the speculative stocks and the consumer packaged goods and the biotechs leading the selling.

It feels like that's what is happening.

It would be a big and important change that indicates we are due at last for something more than just a 0.005 percent pullback. Maybe we get a sell around Memorial Day and take a few days off program?

The other Greeks (Gamma, Vega, and Theta) are calculated by using month and strike data, and not by individual option. These are called strike-based Greeks. Gamma, Theta, and Vega are all strike-based Greeks

optionMONSTER® provides stock market insight, advanced options education, and actionable trade ideas to meet the needs of do-it-yourself investors. After spending decades in the trading pits of Chicago, Jon 'DRJ' and Pete Najarian founded the company in 2005 to help people better manage their own investment portfolios.